Matt Ridley on how they’ll save the world.
The conclusion:
The one thing that will not work is the one thing that the environmental movement insists upon: subsidizing wealthy crony capitalists to build low-density, low-output, capital-intensive, land-hungry renewable energy schemes, while telling the poor to give up the dream of getting richer through fossil fuels.
(Yes, behind paywall, but google the headline and you should be able to read it.)
[Update a while later]
I’m very sorry to hear about Piers Sellers’ illness, and hope for the best, but this NYT op-ed seems to me to be delusional:
All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.
I hope that will change next January. As Ridley points out (as does Alex Epstein), it is the poor who would be hit the hardest byaabandoning fossil fuels (particularly with plunging prices), much more so than by “climate change.”
Reassuring yourself that you’re one of the cool kids, and that just everyone agrees with you, is part of being a liberal. That’s why they commission opinion polls to determine scientific truth, and fix them to give the result they crave.
I don’t think climate change was the main cause of the French Revolution. It was the fact that the French ruined their economy by entering the Revolutionary War on the side of the colonists that finally lit the fuse.
What ecologically responsible American would drive a car when he could hire a surplus Chinese man to run him about in a rickshaw?
FYI, it’s spelled “Matt Ridley”.
This passage was striking:
I see that empirically that is true! But how?? It seems contrary to sense. I would love to articulate a principle that explains the difference, or at least renders it non-paradoxical.
Is it just that non renewables — oil, metals — are produced by Deep Time, so our centuries of development are inadequate to make a dent, while renewables are produced (in some sense) Just In Time, so a little bit of human growth is enough to swamp them?
Any ideas?
The examples given there are self-renewing resources, where the rate of regeneration is proportional (up to a limit) to the population of some organism. Of course it’s possible to extract those to nothing, especially absent property rights.
Solar/wind aren’t like that. The rate of generation of sunlight is independent of the number of solar panels that are put up, silly people in North Carolina notwithstanding.
The NYT article kinda read like it would have been at home on The Onion.
“Man Discovers He Has Cancer, Goes Back to Work”
Reading Ridley’s article, his argument that renewables will not fall below the price of fossil fuels is tenuous. He points to current prices while downplaying the entirely predictable cost declines that will be coming.
His argument that renewables require too much space is economically illiterate. The cost of land can be factored in and need not contribute significantly.
He ignores the declining cost of batteries, instead saying fossil fuel backup will be needed.
Overall, this article shows a stunted sense of imagination. It’s applicable only to the very near term, and says nothing about conditions 20 or more years out.
The argument against subsidies, btw, ignores the purpose of those subsidies: to drive technologies down their learning curves (a positive externality). This has been very successful. It’s actually a more free market friendly approach than having the government pick specific technologies for targeted R&D.
You’re right. Especially with the collapse of fossil fuel prices, you will see even bigger reductions in the costs of renewables as well as storage batteries. The resources consumed to make renewables will go way down in cost with collapse of the commodities price bubble.
What I’d like to see are far better studies on climate sensitivity rather than a multi-trillion dollar reliance on the precautionary principle. BTW not a big fan of the “fossil fuel” phrase. It’s beginning to look like another example of poorly understood science. Let’s call them for what they are: hydrocarbons or HC-based fuels. I used to be highly skeptical of solar-electric as well since it’s manufacture tended in the past to hardly be “carbon-neutral”. But more modern manufacturing techniques have shown it possible to be carbon-reducing over its operative lifetime. It won’t be a climate savior until we know whether the required coupled battery technology is also. Barring the entry of SPS of course. Still waiting for the economic case for that and have been since 1980. The proper type of nuclear could do it as well. Hansen has been ostracized for coming to this realization. The legacy of nuclear power in this country has more do to with naval propulsion than power generation. And current laws and regulations reflect that somewhat unfortunate but practical history.
Owing to the collapse in the price of fossil fuels as well as other critical resources needed, solar and wind is going to get much, much cheaper . . .
The great majority of the cost of solar and wind equipment is not raw materials cost, and in particular not the cost of raw energy inputs.
Already the “Deniers are so Mean” sentiment is being whipped up. I visit Cowing’s site most days, and he thinks he’s in the position to smack our hands with the green ruler for not endorsing Sellers’ emotional gambit.
It has to be some sort of illness that makes them act this way, and frankly, it is depressing.